Hrs Supervisor Fired Amid Pending Lawsuit

June 11, 1985|By Jenni Bergal, Staff Writer

A Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services supervisor who has filed several lawsuits against the agency over the past two years was fired Friday from his job at the South Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center in Miami.

Monty Weinstein, 45, a former unit director at South Florida State Hospital in Pembroke Pines, said he lost his most recent $22,000-a-year job in retaliation for his lawsuits against HRS and Amerimanage Inc., the private company that manages the state mental hospital.

``They`ve been intimidating and harassing me for the last year. It`s been unbelievable,`` said Weinstein, who until Friday was the educational consultant for the HRS-run center in Dade that was to have begun treating forensic mental patients several months ago. Its opening has been delayed until at least mid-July.

But an official from the treatment center said Weinstein had been fired because of a series of problems with his job performance, including insubordination and failure to perform assigned duties.

``We don`t pursue frivolous things here,`` said Anne Pascone, the center`s acting administrator. ``We`re a serious organization and we have things to do here, and we want those things done.``

Weinstein`s problems with HRS started in 1983, after he was laid off from his supervisory job at South Florida State Hospital.

He was transferred to Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee, but he fought the move when a Dade County judge ruled he could not take his two children from a previous marriage with him because the move would interfere with their mother`s visitation rights.

After a series of court battles, HRS and Weinstein eventually agreed that he would return to South Florida, where he began work at the Dade treatment center last June.

Under the agreement, Weinstein was to develop internship programs with local universities to allow graduate students to work with forensic patients.

At the same time, he dropped a complaint he had filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charging HRS with anti-Semitism after he was turned down for a job as director of the forensic unit at Florida State Hospital.

But Weinstein said he began being harassed soon after he started work at the Dade center.

Three months later, his attorney filed another lawsuit against HRS and Amerimanage, charging that they had broken the agreement by refusing to allow him to do his job and by giving his old, recently restored position at South Florida State to his former assistant rather than to him.

On Monday, Weinstein`s attorney asked for an injunction in Dade Circuit Court to allow him to keep his job until after his previous lawsuit goes to trial. No hearing has been set on the request.

Pascone said Monday that Weinstein`s performance, and not his lawsuits, was the reason for his firing.

She said that Weinstein previously had been suspended for excessive tardiness and leaving work without authorization, and that he had been reprimanded for insubordination and using department phones for personal calls.